The Sea
The Sea is a short story following a Toa of Fire after the demise of his team. It deals with matters of loss, expectation, and the problems both can bring. ''The Sea'' Lodran walked down the rocky slope to the beach, his armored feet sounding a sloshing, muted thud with every step. It had finished raining, and the mud was cumbersome. The young Toa of Fire sighed as he walked. When he was a Matoran, a trip to the beach was a momentous occasion. It was always a chance for fun, to get out of his workplace and do something other than hammer out Kanoka for the more skilled artisans to forge into Kanohi. Now, though, the beach - especially this one - was just another reminder of his mistakes. Lodran had protested when the Turaga made him leader of his team. He didn’t have the right stuff, and the other Toa seemed to know it. But the old crow was stubborn, and demanded that Lodran had to lead, both out of tradition and the will of the Great Spirit. Would the Turaga have made the same decision had he known how utterly wrong he had been? The sun peeked out from the clouds on the horizon, casting a dark red glow across the land. Lodran could hear waves pounding against the beach as the high tide began to make its approach. He kept walking down the path, trying not to slip as he went. He’d failed all of them. Mors had told him that after every mission. Lodran had tried to tell himself otherwise for years, but the Toa of Stone’s words had proven true. Not a single one of them had made it under his leadership. They’d all left or were killed by his poor leadership. Mors had left long ago. He had expressed his disdain with Lodran since the Turaga formed the team to protect the southern continent, and their first accident only confirmed his sentiment. After a long night of cursing him, Mors left the team for good. Lodran had heard nothing of him since. Garian, the Toa of Lightning, had left the team next. She wanted to branch out and see the universe, and she felt the team was only holding her potential for good back. Her last words to Lodran had been much kinder than Mors’, but losing another teammate had only worsened his disposition. Their Toa of Earth, Zerest, was killed in battle not long after the Great Cataclysm. The Makuta of their island sent a patrol of Rahkshi to “remove” the local Toa. Lodran led them into a trap on accident. Heavily outnumbered, he had his team run from the Rahkshi, only to lead them into a dead end in a canyon. Boxed in, Zerest used his powers to create an escape tunnel, only to be hit by the power of a Guurahk’s staff a second later. Lodran still couldn’t get the image of the Toa’s violet and black armor slowly burning away out of his mind. Kaist had stuck with Lodran to the end, if only to keep his home protected. The Makuta had other plans. The Toa of Air was killed in a struggle with an Exo-Toa, crushed beneath the automaton’s metallic fists. Lodran had tried to stop it, but was too weak and inexperienced to stop such a monster. Instead, he ran like the coward he was. And he spent the rest of his life running. The Maktua had not stopped hunting him, and he would be found, eventually. His death would be no great victory, though. He had not fought in years, and he would only bring the Makuta the satisfaction of having killed an entire Toa team. He reached the shoreline. The air was already cool when he got there, but he didn’t mind. He was looking for someone. He wished he could see Vitara’s golden eyes light up under her Kaukau when he approached. She always had had beautiful eyes. But the only thing that greeted him here was the pile of rocks under which her armor lay. Lodran sighed. Her death, like those of Zerest and Kaist, had been his fault. They were fighting a pack of Tarakava, and he had made a bad call. Instead of listening to Vitara, the resident Rahi expert’s advice, he had told her to go past the beasts and move into deeper water to flank them. One of them got her in the side. She succumbed to her injuries not long after the battle. Then Mors called Lodran a failure. After that, the Toa of Stone’s statement only kept gaining proof. Lodran sighed again, staring at the rocks. Why had he been appointed to this position? It wasn’t meant for him. Mors, Zerest, Kaist, Garian, and Vitara all would have made better leaders. Lodran was never leadership material. He was never even Toa material. He was good at one thing: prepping materials for mask makers, not even good enough to fashion masks himself. Why the Great Spirit had selected him for being a Toa was beyond him, and he had come to believe that it was not the work of Mata Nui but of a senile Turaga not at all right in the head. He placed a hand on Vitara’s grave and closed his eyes, wishing something would change. That he could go back and undo all that had happened. That he could stop that Turaga from giving him a Toa Stone. He then looked out to the sea. His fellow Toa would be remembered. Vitara had songs sung about her in the Ga-Matoran village. Le-Matoran dedicated instrumental pieces to Kaist. Zerest even had a statue in an underground shrine, far out of the Makuta’s reach. But Lodran? His fellow Ta-Matoran laughed when they heard he was a Toa. He was the coward, the Toa who ran and left them to be ruled by the Makuta. The only memory of him would be a sour one, if there was one at all. He drew his sword and dropped it into the sand. The Maktua might find it and think it enough to finally declare Lodran dead. He walked out into the ocean, waves lapping against his armored boots. He turned back one last time, hoping beyond hope that he might see Vitara’s spirit or some other sign of forgiveness. But things like that only happened in stories. All that he saw was a pile of stones. Lodran walked further out, dropped to his knees, and waited for the tide. Trivia *The Makuta mentioned in the story is not Teridax, the Makuta of Metru Nui, but Mutran, who governed the Southern Continent. Mutran is referred to as The Makuta because he would most likely be the only Makuta that the inhabitants of the Southern Continent were aware of at the time. *Although it was written in March of 2015, the writer debated much over whether or not to release it on the site due to its dark subject matter and connection to problems he was dealing with at the time. After much deliberation, it was released in July of the same year. **The original concept for the story was created nearly six months before it was written and involved Lodran's conversation with Vitara's ghost.